


black runs the space between the stars

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, Eldritch/Cosmic Horror, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Gen, The Force as an Eldritch Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 07:38:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19825540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: It welcomes her when she twists her hand at her side as though to caress the great invisible shadow that follows her footsteps. She welcomes it as it nips at her ankles and guides her down this path and that until she finds new people to meet and new places to hide.It sings in her head, too, strange songs no ear can hear, and the maids of the court think her strange as she tilts her head to follow the strange slow song that rings her round.





	black runs the space between the stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



> Wasn't really sure what to do with the list of Likes you gave, so have some Character Study Leia Organa and Force As Eldritch Monstrosity fic.

Leia was four years old when first she felt the Force. She’d always felt it, in a way. It swam around her like an ocean, dark and deep and full of secrets she was not yet strong or able enough to see, but this was the first time she’d _felt_ it, truly felt it. It had always been there, like the air she breathed, but this was the moment it clarified, the moment she realised, the moment she not only felt its presence but understood what it meant.

She felt it reach out to her.

* * *

The Force, Leia knows, is many things. Bail and Breha, as she grew, told her stories. Told her of the Jedi, destroyed by the Emperor, told her of the Emperor, and the Dark Side of the Force. Told her of how the Force could help and the Force could harm, how it’s wielders could fell any opponent - and ended up felling each other. They told her of the Force enough to make her almost _fear_ the Force, but that it swam at her side and in her shadow.

They told her, too, of the Dark Side of the Force, of how it could steal secrets from one’s mind, of how it worked on emotion, of how it was a shadowy, dark, and unsafe thing, deep as the ocean and twice as dangerous.

Leia, feeling the dark tendrils of the Force that reached out of its stretching depths, wondered sometimes if that made her Dark too.

She knows the Force that reaches for her. It is… gentle in its way, not soft, but not harsh either. It had recoiled, when it had first reached for her and she, stumblingly, had tried to reach back, but it welcomes her now when she twists her hand at her side as though to caress the great invisible shadow she feels following her footsteps. She welcomes it as it nips at her ankles and guides her down this path and that until she finds new people to meet and new places to hide. It sings in her head, too, strange songs no ear can hear, and the maids of the court think her strange as she tilts her head to follow the strange slow song that rings her round. 

It shows her where to step, though, and what words to say, and the great shadow of it slicks away from her ankles when she catches the attention of those others it blesses with its favour. She used to wonder at that, used to _fear_ , when the Force, her ever-present shadow, slipped from her side, but she understands it, now, after so many times of it slinking away and slinking back, its shadow licking at her palm in apology.

It has few dedicants to it and itself alone, and so many others corrupted to serve other masters.

She grasps, even young as she is, that the Force does not much care for the Jedi or the Sith, but they can reach to it, and they can claim some portion of it and so it must _allow_ them that.

She, though, has never yet tried to take, and simply followed where it has led. It seems, she gathers, that it likes her for that, for not taking any more than she is given.

* * *

She feels when Alderaan falls. She feels it, the great gasping chasm before her. She feels it, the ache, the burn, the choking core of ash and coal before everything becomes nothing but- 

Nothing.

She feels, too, at her side, the Force, a shadowed hound mawed in tendrils of darkness, feels it illuminate in anger so much it almost blinds her. She wonders, then, that Vader cannot see it, cannot feel it, cannot sense the wrathful thing that is their true and only master, but when she is thrown into her cell and the Force curls up beneath her palm, offering purring rage and grief-fuelled sympathy, she remembers why it leaves and returns, leaves and returns, leaves and returns to her side over and over.

She remains its one true servant, the one who never takes more than given, and who dedicates herself to it and not some other ideal.

Vader has the Emperor. The Emperor has his goals.

Leia, for all her family, for all her parents and her cousins and her world all now taken from her, Leia has always had above all else, the Force.

* * *

The Force licks around Luke’s ankles too, gently and almost playfully. It recoils only a little at the boy, when he reaches out to it, but as he pulls Leia towards freedom Leia hears its guiding song nonetheless, and so too, it seems, does Luke. 

She almost wants to tell him: “Don’t take more than it gives,” but she does not think he can see it as she does, can sense it as she does. To him, it is the ocean: she thinks perhaps it has never reached to him with shadowed tendrils, nor licked at his palm, nor sung in his head. He can hear it, but only as a hint or an echo, not in the thought-filling way Leia does.

But then, Leia has been immersed in its morass since she was four. She is _of_ it in a way she isn’t of anything else, and understands that it gives, but does not like snatching hands.

Luke, at least, is stumbling and uncertain in his use of it, careful as he learns and she thinks, with his mentor gone, that perhaps he will learn the gentleness that she has, the coaxing softness, and clear-asking purpose that has kept the Force so strong at her side.

* * *

(Here is what Leia tells no one: she has had to practice to have the grasp of the Force she does now. She has known it from her early days, but to know it is not to use it, and to use it is to find the careful line between taking and asking. Leia knows how to take: all living things do. Leia had to learn how to _ask._

(The Force, when she asks it, feeds her power. It hums at her side, and along her muscles, it makes her stronger and faster and sharper, and it lets her Know things from other’s minds. Leia knows that some say this is Dark. It lets her, too, guide attention away, make people forget. Leia knows that this, some say, was an ability of the Jedi, and therefore Light. 

(Leia thinks that the Force is the Force and it is neither and both of those things. The Force is its own master, and she is but it’s well-guided servant.)

* * *

When her son is born, Leia swaddles him in cloth and in Force. She asks of it, the shadowed hound that has licked at her palm and nipped at her heels, that has answered some prayers and refused others, the beast that has kept her safe as long as she has served it.

She asks of it: Keep him safe.

She has served it all her life. She has rarely asked for something so grand. She has asked little favours, small aids, for guidance and for comfort, and sometimes the Force has given and sometimes it has not. It has asked: obedience, trust, silence of its secrets. Leia has told no one of the shadowed beast that stalks her footsteps. 

She asks of it: Keep him safe.

The Force responds with grand tendrils reaching from the black space between the stars, its maw as wide as the sky, the stars but bright reflections of its joy and its anger, the black, deep and dark and _everything_ and _nothing_ all at once, full of Force and empty of all else.

She feels it reach for her little boy, feels it lick at his palm and nip at his heels same as she has felt it do at her own.

She wonders if he is too young to know it, or if he will know it and be changed.

It is not something she will know until too many years later.

* * *

“There was a shadow,” Luke says, and she _fears_ now, fears what her brother might have done. “A shadow in the Force. Leia, it was _consuming_ him.”

She knows what Luke means. She had seen it herself. The Force swaddles her boy, even now, wraps around him far more encompassingly than it ever did her. It had reached for her, wrapped tendrils around her hand, set teeth around her ankles, left its voice singing in her head, but it did not cloak her as it did him, as it had him from the day he was born.

Leia wonders now, if asking the Force’s protection might not have been a mistake.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


End file.
